Latest news with #Maynooth
BreakingNews.ie
3 days ago
- General
- BreakingNews.ie
HSA launch investigation into death of businessman in freak accident
The Health and Safety Authority has launched an investigation into a freak accident which claimed the life of the chief executive of the Irish branch of Insurance firm Lloyds. The businessman has been named locally as 58-year-old Eamonn Egan. Mr Egan, was also a former amateur jockey, and also hunted with Ward Union. Advertisement The accident occurred close to his home in Maynooth, Co Kildare, on Monday morning when a tractor loader fell. Gardaí and emergency services were alerted to the accident. Mr Egan was pronounced dead a short time later. A post mortem examination is due to be carried out on Mr Egan's remains in due course. Ireland Captain of MV Matthew carrying 2.2 tonnes of cocai... Read More In a statement the Health and Safety Authority said they are 'aware of the incident' and have 'launched an investigation'. A friend of Mr Egan's who did not wish to be named said they were in 'shock at the news of his death. He was in great form when I met him over the weekend. He would help out anyone he could. A really lovely and kind man.' The Coroner's office has been notified which is normal protocol in such cases. Mr Egan is survived by a daughter and son who are in their late 20s.
BreakingNews.ie
4 days ago
- General
- BreakingNews.ie
Man dies in farm accident in Co Kildare
The chief executive of the Irish branch of an international insurance firm has died following a farm accident in Co Kildare on Monday morning. The fatal accident occurred close to Maynooth, Co Kildare, when a tractor loader is understood to have fallen. Advertisement The man has been named locally as 58-year-old Eamonn Egan. Mr Egan was the chief executive of the Irish branch of insurance firm Lloyds, a former amateur jockey, and also hunted with Ward Union. Gardaí and emergency services were alerted to the accident. Mr Egan was pronounced dead at the scene. A post-mortem examination is due to be carried out on Mr Egan's remains in due course. The Coroner's office has been notified, which is normal protocol in such cases. Mr Egan is survived by a daughter and son who are in their late 20s.
Irish Examiner
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Book review: A useful lesson from our past
There is a small comfort in the fact that this pertinent reminder that the Irish are as susceptible as anyone to the blandishments of 'men of action' ends describing the disarray sundering the far right in Ireland. Ireland's National Party, a name laughably in inverted proportion to its support, once couldn't agree who its leader was and who should take responsibility for its gold reserves. That hopeless cabal's dilemmas are symptomatic of the division that caused one amalgamation of the far right after another to run into the solid wall of decency, the all-too-often-latent humanity, underpinning this society. That cultural understanding endured despite the encouragement of one rabid cleric after another. Though some lay figures were appalling antisemites so too were many Maynooth alumni trained to make god's love an active force. That they were not curbed by their hierarchy tells its own story, one that resonates today. The voices of hard Catholicism were sharpest around the Spanish Civil War. They encouraged those who might want to support Franco's attack on democratic Spain. These adventurers were led by the most pathetic figure in Ó Ruairc's important recalling of Irish foibles: Eoin O'Duffy. The founder of the Blueshirts and, unimaginably, the Blueblouses, who were confined to making tea and sandwiches, O'Duffy promised Franco 6,000 men under arms. This expedition fell into a drunken embarrassment. This is hardly surprising as O'Duffy, who studiously avoided the front line, was an alcoholic who shot off one of his fingers while drunk. It might be kind to think that his addiction provoked his suggestion that Éamon de Valera was the 'bastard son of a Spanish Jew'. His recklessness was aped by his men in Spain, some of whom were found drunk in a brothel, where the prostitutes wore rosary beads as necklaces, rosary beads that had been given to the volunteers as they left Holy Ireland to slay the communist dragon. Another hero was so drunk he vomited on a Spanish officer. The Irish far right remains unsuccessful despite the ambiguity of Catholic leadership, but whether today's online influences — everyone from Steve Bannon to the gob-for-hire Tucker Carlson — can be resisted is open to debate. The November 2023 riots in Dublin were facilitated by social media. The arguments used around the world are echoed in our national discourse, but then when two very real issues — immigration and housing — conflate, the tinder box is primed. Ó Ruairc points to the affinity between the far right and the harder edges of loyalism in the North, but he reminds us too of the IRA's position in July, 1940, when defeat of the Allies looked likely. IRA leader Seán Russell issued a statement saying that if 'German forces should land in Ireland, they will land … as friends and liberators of the Irish people'. That puts that generation of the IRA on the very wrong side of history, but points to an unfortunate absence in this history. If Ó Ruairc was happy to list loyalist links to the far right, then the provos deserve similar attention. Nevertheless, the core message of this valuable book is that a party founded by some truly odious bigots — Fine Gael — has evolved into a modernish, socially liberal force. Whether that evolution will continue quickly enough to confront immigration and the housing crisis, remains to be seen. But it must, as Ó Ruairc has shown the consequences of not doing so. Time to put that old saw into action: Learn from history or repeat it.
Irish Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Ireland is running out of priests. There is an obvious solution
Pope Leo XIV is by all accounts an excellent organiser. But, at least in Ireland, an obvious question arises: if he sticks to his stated opposition to what he calls 'clericalising women' , what is there left to organise? Here, the pope is a general with lots of grandly arrayed officers, but no foot soldiers. If you're my age, the slow vanishing of the clergy is one of those phenomena that happens so inexorably that you can lose sight of their profundity. Even in the 1980s, Bob Geldof could, without too much anachronism, wail on the Boomtown Rats' Banana Republic: 'Everywhere I go/ Everywhere I see/ The black and blue uniforms/ Police and priests.' Now that it is almost as hard to spot a priest on the street as it is to see a cop, even us heathens are at a loss: how can one be anti-clerical when there are no clerics? In the year of my birth, 1958, the Catholic sociologist Jeremiah Newman (later bishop of Limerick) wrote in The Furrow that the sheer number of men in black in Ireland 'has meant that some priests have not enough work to do'. According to statistics he compiled, the country had 5,489 priests – one for every 593 Catholics. And the production line was still working overtime: Maynooth, Clonliffe and the other seminaries were turning out nearly 350 newly minted clerics every year. Italy had 20 seminarians per 100,000 Catholics; France had 22; the US 26. Ireland had an astonishing 75. READ MORE This glut meant that Ireland operated a religious trade surplus on a scale that would have enraged Donald Trump . Newman reckoned there were an additional 5,000 Irish priests serving abroad. If you factor them in, there would thus have been one Irish priest for roughly every 300 Irish Catholics. Newman expressed the fear that this superabundance might create resentment: 'It should also be remembered that it is possible for a brand of anti-clericalism to appear, based on nothing more than the fact that the clergy appear too numerous.' He need not have worried. In 1972 and 1973, the Jesuit sociologist Mícheál Mac Gréil conducted a pioneering survey of the social attitudes of adults in Dublin. They were asked, among other things, to rank how happy they would be to have a member of a particular occupation as a close friend. At the lowest end of this scale were drug pushers. At the highest were priests. Second were 'members of religious orders'. Similarly, 91 per cent of Dubliners said they would be happy to have a priest as a member of the family, compared with just 81 per cent who said the same for a member of Fine Gael . Dubs in general felt more comfortable with men in black than in blue shirts. This prestige drew on spiritual power, but also on social omnipresence. Priests were not just everywhere – they were in every part of people's lives. In his memoir, the then bishop of Derry Edward Daly, best known for ministering to the dying on the streets of the Bogside on Bloody Sunday, described his job when he was a working priest as encompassing the roles of 'social worker, marriage counsellor, bereavement counsellor and youth counsellor, as well as attempting to deliver a dozen other services that were not strictly related to priesthood'. He was not exaggerating. There are still priests who do all these jobs and who are held in very high regard by their communities. But theirs is a dying trade. In 2022, a study for the Association of Catholic Priests found that of the total of 2,116 diocesan priests in Ireland, 299 (almost 15 per cent) were over 75 and still working, while 547 (over 25 per cent) were between 60 and 75. Conversely, just 52 priests (2.5 per cent) were under 40. There will be almost no one left to replace those who are going. Last November, the Dublin Catholic diocese noted that 'no priest was ordained for the archdiocese this year and only two priests have been ordained for the archdiocese since 2020'. You don't have to be a devout Catholic to sense the pathos of this decline . In 2014, the American priest and writer Donald Cozzens, addressing those who had gathered in the once-mighty seminary at Maynooth to celebrate the jubilee of their ordinations, was brutally frank: 'The respect and trust of past years has been mostly shattered. Good people look at us with a wary eye. We want to say, 'You can trust me. I won't hurt you, nor will I hurt your children.' But trust has been broken.' He posed the existential question: 'Could you men gathered here at the seminary that formed you possibly be the last priests in Ireland?' [ Author Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin: 'I'll always be angry about the history of the church in Ireland' Opens in new window ] They will not literally be so. There will always be at least some priests. But there has been a profound cultural shift. Colm Tóibín 's exquisitely poignant story A Priest in the Family turns that phrase, once regarded as a blessing by 91 per cent of Dubliners, into a sorrow that haunts an old woman as she learns that her son has been charged with the sexual abuse of some of his pupils. It is hard to see the old meaning ever being restored. Except, of course, that it is in another sense not hard at all. Looked at objectively, there are few great problems that have such obvious solutions. The church is like a farmer who complains of a diminished crop while ploughing only one depleted field and leaving the rest of the land fallow. It creates its own dearth by refusing to admit married men or any women to the priesthood. [ Mary McAleese is right to call out Catholic Church over its exclusion of women from ordination Opens in new window ] It may be that the sorrow of 'the last priests in Ireland' has no real resonance for the new pope. Perhaps Ireland itself has been mentally ditched from Catholic history as a lost cause that is best forgotten. But if lost causes are so easily discarded, why not do the same for the biggest lost cause of them all: the unique sanctity of the celibate male?
Irish Times
10-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Times
‘It's still raw after 24 years': Walkers remember personal tragedy at poignant Darkness into Light event
A grandmother, mother and a nine-year-old boy from Maynooth huddled together on a damp wooden bench at the local GAA club at 4am this morning in preparation for the Darkness into Light walk . 'It's still very raw, even after 24 years,' the younger woman said. Her eyes glistened when asked why they were there, as she remembered a close friend of hers, Eamon, who died by suicide. 'He was a friend of hers from school, the debs and all,' said the older woman said. READ MORE 'It was his first year out of secondary school. He got help, they gave him the three weeks for mental health , he came out, [but after] three days he did it quietly himself, he will always be remembered.' 'We still have his rugby jersey in the house,' added the younger woman. The family asked not to be identified. 'Talking about it is far better than not. She was in her first year in college and Eamon spoke with her a few hours before about how they were going to go to Australia ,' the older woman said. For the grandmother and mother it was important that the boy was present too. 'To let him know that this is what goes on in the world, and that it's good to talk,' said his grandmother. 'We wanted him to experience this,' added his mother. The walk is an annual nationwide fundraising event for Pieta , a charity that supports people affected by suicide or self harm. Participants walked 5km, setting off from locations including GAA clubs, churches and schools, beginning at 4.15am. [ Darkness into Light in pictures: Thousands take part in predawn walk to raise funds for Pieta Opens in new window ] Pieta opened in Lucan, Co Dublin, in 2006 and now operates in 20 locations across Ireland, employing more than 300 therapists and support staff. According to a post on the charity's Facebook page on April 24th, sign-ups for this year were down 40 per cent. Some people posted in the comments section that the €22 sign-up fee for adults was too much and other comments referenced issues, which came to national prominence in 2021 , relating to the remuneration of management at the top of the charity. Pieta said they would respond to queries but had not done so by the time of publication. In Maynooth, attendance at the event was similar to last year, with organisers reporting that more than 1,000 people walked the route. Participants began walking at the GAA club and continued along the main street, returning again via a loop which brought them back up along Carton Avenue to be greeted by the music of local artist Matthew Lennon as the dawn began to break through. One organiser of the walk, who is also involved in organising events in Maynooth University, said that there was a 40 per cent drop off there too post-Covid. Eimear Deering said she had relied on Pieta in the past. Photograph: Stephen Farrell Any participants that The Irish Times spoke to were effusive in their praise of the event and Pieta, including Eimear Deering (70) and her daughter, Niamh (37). 'It was fabulous,' says Niamh. 'There was mist on the fields and the sun was coming up, it was absolutely stunning. We are remembering those who passed on in their own way,' adds Eimear. For them the walk and the charity have added personal significance. 'We had to go to them [Pieta] in years past, it was a life saver. I have no problem in giving them any amount of money, I think when you have been touched by it you'd give anything,' says Eimear.
